'Squalid' private jail was too mean to buy toilet seats

A culture of "institutional meanness" pervades the privately run Doncaster prison, with no pillows for many prisoners, or even toilet seats, a report by the chief inspector of prisons says today.

Anne Owers says the "squalid and deteriorating" conditions at Doncaster could be blamed on managers making savings in all areas not "specifically mandated" in their Home Office contract. This was done even if it meant standards slipping below what was safe and decent, and she warns it could become commonplace if prison contracts are awarded without detailed standards being specified.

The 1,100-inmate prison is run by the Serco group, formerly Premier Prison Services, which manages four jails in England. The report found: "Many prisoners lacked pillows, adequate mattresses, toilet seats, working televisions, noticeboards and places to store belongings.

"Some cells, especially on the young prisoners' wing, were dirty and festooned with graffiti. These were examples of an institutional meanness which was also reflected in the practice of making prisoners pay to change the PIN phone numbers they needed to contact relatives, and in the fact that no unemployment pay was provided to those prisoners for whom no work was available."

The report of the inspection, in November, says that Doncaster is not a bad local prison, with mostly good relationships between staff and inmates, but it has gone backwards since the last inspection in 2003. In particular it has failed to tackle complaints about inadequate arrangements for prisoners' first nights, and to expand purposeful activities for the time the prisoners spent out of their cells.

"Our main concern was not only that managers had failed to tackle the problems we pointed out at the last inspection, but also that the prison had deteriorated in some important respects," the chief inspector says. "It is noticeable that the deficits that we found are all in areas not specifically mandated by the contract under which the prison is run. There remains a concern that, in focusing on meeting their contractual obligations, prison managers had allowed important areas to slip below what was safe and decent; and indeed may have sought savings in precisely those areas."

A Serco spokesman said the company was proud of the "safe and secure environment" it provided at Doncaster. "This inspection, at a time of very high prison population pressures, identified some shortcomings which we have acted to address. It also highlighted many areas of good practice."